Impulsive (23 page)

She shook her head and tried to look stern even while her insides danced. “I'm not sure I'm familiar with it.”

“Interesting.”

“I guess you'll have to teach me about that one.”

“And then we can figure out the important stuff.”

“Like?” As far as she was concerned, they'd already hit the biggies. He loved her. She loved him. That was good enough for her.

“How soon we can move you in here.”

She hadn't thought she could be happier until right that second. “That's a big step.”

“The first of many.”

“You have my attention.”

“Besides, I want to wake up with you every morning.”

She almost squealed with joy over that one, but she tried to be practical. “What will the voters think?”

“That I'm damn lucky.”

“Oh, you're about to get lucky, all right.”

He chuckled in a rich, clear tone that vibrated with warmth. “We also have to plan our first public function together.”

Plans
. He was building a life and putting her in it. No hiding or secret dates. “Nice.”

“Then there's the decision about when you meet my parents for more than two seconds.”

She winced. “It all sounded good until…there.”

“They'll love you.”

“They've seen me naked.”

He wiggled his eyebrows. “So have I.”

“Do you really think it's the same thing?”

Before she could get her nerves all riled up and panicky, he kissed her. Long and deep, sending a calming sensation running through her.

“They'll love you because I do,” he said against her lips.

The perfect sentiment at the perfect time. That summed up Eric.

“Why don't you take me upstairs and tell me over and over how much you love me?”

“From now to forever.”

Eight months later

E
ric fell back against the mattress and tried to quiet the heartbeat thundering in his ears. Once again, his wife had wiped him out. “Man, that just gets better each time.”

Katie wiggled her fingers in front of his face and let her arm drop across his chest. “It's the wedding ring. Marriage and diamonds improve sex. It's a proven fact.”

“What book is that from again?”

“Are you complaining?”

“Not even a little. But you know you could have had the ring long before you did if you hadn't insisted on waiting until after the election to walk down the aisle.”

She rested her head against his shoulder. “One huge life change at a time, please. It was strange enough to get married just a few days after the election.”

“I was more excited about the wedding.”

“Which is one of the reasons I love you.” She placed a kiss on his damp chest. “But I wanted to get settled in school and for you win your big boy job first so you could concentrate on me.”

“I think I just did.”

“Men.”

When she pinched his side, he grabbed her hand and held on. “Stop that. And for the record, I didn't see a reason to wait. I knew I wanted you with me always.”

“Says the man who insisted we get married eight months ago, after we'd known each other all of two weeks.”

“I seem to remember you weakening shortly after that.”

“Your poor mother. I can still see the look on her face when I suggested we run off to Vegas.”

“It was almost as good as the look on yours when she told you she forbade it.” He had to laugh. Watching the two women in his life circle each other and establish boundaries was a never-ending source of amusement for him. They respected each other, loved each other, and had no idea how to relate to each other. He couldn't think of two people who were less alike.

“I was kidding, but her threats were serious,” Katie said.

“Don't worry. I'm sure she'll figure out a way to forgive you for the joke…eventually. The fact you let her plan the wedding and gave her six months to do it up big helped.”

Katie lifted up on her elbow and looked down at him with that sexy little smile that crushed out every bad day. “I think I have a way to make her downright delirious.”

“Do tell.”

“Since you guys are all so big on family responsibility.”

“Japanese people?”

“No, you big racist.” She kissed him, softening her tough words. “I meant the Kimura family.”

“Oh, that.” He propped his head up on his elbow to get a better look at her. Let his other hand wander down her back to the top of her thighs. “Go ahead.”

She sighed. “Are you even listening to me?”

“Kind of hard to when you're not wearing panties.”

She opened her legs a bit more to give his fingers all the access they wanted. “That's a gift for later.”

“When exactly does ‘later' start?”

“I'm trying to tell you something.”

“Sorry.” But not sorry enough to remove his hand.

“In addition to winning an election and bagging yourself an awesome wife—”

“We need to work on your low self-esteem.”

“—we have something else to celebrate.”

“Seth dating your sister?”

Katie closed her eyes for a second in a look he now knew as mock disgust. “Ugh. Don't remind me.”

“He's a good guy.” Eric knew Katie loved him, too. They had a sibling-like relationship. Lots of teasing and more than a little screaming when Katie realized Seth had asked Cara out.

Despite that, Katie had agreed to Seth's being the Best Man. The role had him walking down the aisle with Cara. From what Eric could tell, they looked pretty comfortable together, so Katie had better get used to it.

“He comes around and she turns into a clumsy mess,” Katie said.

Eric remembered feeling the same way around Katie in the beginning. All hands and big feet. No moves at all. “Sounds familiar.”

“You'd better not be talking about me.”

“I was referring to my other wife.”

“Oh, really. Where are you keeping her?” She poked him in the side and didn't stop until he caught her hands and flipped her over on her back.

Looming over her like this, he could watch her pretty eyes go all dreamy while he touched her. “Point is Seth adores Ashleigh and he's pretty hot on Cara. Last I checked, you wanted her to be happy.”

Katie slipped her arms around his neck as her thighs came up to trap him in his current position. “You know what will make her positively giddy?”

“The perfect lobster roll?”

“Being an aunt.”

“What?”

Katie took his hand and pressed it against her flat stomach. “We're only six weeks along, so we should probably hold off on telling people, but I'm thinking Cara will be thrilled and your mom might stop looking at me like I'm going to explode.”

The news came at him and kept whizzing by. He tried to get the words to fit into his brain. To understand the reason behind her huge smile.

“Wait…what?”

She kissed his chin. “Pregnant.”

“Are you sure?” He was almost afraid to believe it. His heart jolted at the thought. It was the last piece in a life so full and rich that he wondered every day what he'd done to deserve it.

“I threw up three times yesterday.”

He knew he should feel bad about her being sick, and part of him did, but what it represented—a baby—there was no way he could regret that. He was too busy fighting off flashes of a miniature Katie running around and stealing his heart.

“Why didn't you tell me?” His hand shook as he touched her cheek.

She smiled up at him. “I just did.”

“Before now.”

“I was waiting to see if the stick turned pink.”

He wanted to know for sure. “We need to make an appointment—”

“And the doctor confirmed it this afternoon.” Her smile went all soft and sweet. “Why, counselor, I do believe I've stumped you.”

Emotions crashed in on him—hope, love, worries about whether he'd be a good dad. In two seconds, and with one word his whole life changed again. And he could trace it all, every good thing, back to Katie. “We just started trying.”

“We've gone without condoms for months now. Besides, I'm young and fertile.”

And so sexy that his mind turned to mush when she took her clothes off. “Apparently.”

“Plus you're pretty lively in the bedroom for an old dude.” Because he looked like he got stuck on the wrong end of a shotgun blast, she tried again. “The election isn't the only thing you won that night.”

His swaggering confidence came rushing back. Strong shoulders and an openess that lit up his face. “Oh, yeah. I remember now. A little champagne and we started talking kids.”

Took him long enough to come around. Though she had to admit the tough talk mixed nicely with the trembling she could feel in his hands. “I'm betting our success had something to do with me tying your wrists to the headboard with your ties. The loss of control got your sperm all riled up.”

He shook his head. “Pregnant. I still can't believe it.”

She cupped his cheek in her palm. “Poor baby. You're stunned.”

“Happy.” He pressed his face into her hand. “More than I ever thought possible.”

“Keep saying stuff like that and I'm going to get all weepy on you.” As it was she almost burst into tears delivering the good news.

“You can do whatever you want to me.”

“Are you saying that because I'm going to get huge while carrying our baby and you're worried I'll be miserable?”

He had the smarts to wince. “A little.”

“Very nice.”

“I'll take care of you no matter how big you get.”

“Thanks. I think.”

He gave her hand one more kiss. “I'm saying it because I love you more than anything in this world.”

“Have I ever told you how happy I am you had such a crappy time at Deana's wedding?”

“We should have put that on the gift card.”

“I was the server at the time not a guest.”

“Ah, I remember that skirt well.” The sexy smile told her he did.

“Not that you saw it on me for more than five seconds.”

“Good times.” He nodded. “Still, it's a lovely sentiment.”

She gave him a light shove in the shoulder. “Without that day, without Deana and Josh, we never would have found each other.”

Katie could say the other woman's name now without cringing. She'd actually grown to like Deana. It helped that Deana went all anal retentive and bossy in her push to get Eric elected. And she loved Josh enough to wipe out any doubt of her being stuck on Eric.

Eric's mouth traveled over her collarbone and headed south. “Somehow we would have.”

She started losing track of the conversation. When his lips moved like that. “How do you figure?”

“You're the one.” His mouth found her breast.

The tugging and caressing ripped through her. “I'm going to hold you to that, you know?”

“I'll sign anything.”

“Now?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Sixty years from now, you'd better be saying the same thing.” Somehow she knew he would. Eric was solid and sexy, decent and smart. He was her man and she would never let him go.

He smiled up at her. “I'll say it every day if you let me.”

“Count on it.”

Be sure to look for
A DARKER SHADE OF DEAD

by Bianca D'Arc out now!

“T
his blows.”

Dr. Sandra McCormick's voice echoed around the morgue. Well, it wasn't really a morgue. At least it hadn't been. The large room had been a perfectly good laboratory until the senior team members had decided to perform tests on cadavers. Now it was a morgue.

The temperature had been lowered to near freezing, and Sandra shivered in her lab coat. She'd donned her heaviest jacket under the lab coat she had borrowed from one of the men on the team who wore a much larger size, but it still wasn't enough. She was cold, dammit.

Cold, miserable, and all alone on night shift because she was low man on the totem pole. The science team had been together for a few months, working for the military on ways to improve combat performance. Specifically, they'd been trying to come up with substances that, when injected into people, would improve healing and endurance in living tissue. They were at the point now where they'd graduated from in vitro testing in petri dishes to something a bit more exotic.

They weren't ready to try in vivo testing on living animals or people. Instead, the senior scientists had decided to take this grotesque step, administering the experimental regenerative serum to dead tissue contained in a whole, deceased organism. Personally, she would've preferred to start with a dead animal of some kind, but only human cadavers would work for this experiment since the genetic manipulation they were attempting was coded specifically for human tissue. They didn't want any cross-contamination with animals if they found a substance that actually worked.

As a result, she was stuck in a freezing cold lab in the middle of the night, watching a bunch of dead Marines. It was kind of sad, actually. Every one of these men had been cut down in their prime by either illness or injury. They had all been highly trained and honed specimens of manhood while they were alive. Some of them had been quite handsome, but their beauty had been lost to the pale coldness of death. They were here because they had no next of kin—only their beloved Corps—and their bodies had been donated to science.

The room was dimly lit. Sandra only needed the individual lights over each metal table on which the bodies rested to do her work. She'd holed up at a desk in the far corner of the giant lab space, entering the data she collected hourly for each body into a computer. Her fingers were already numb from the cold, and it had only been three hours. Five more to go before the day shift would release her from this icy prison.

She heard a rustling sound in the distance as she blew on her fingers to try to warm them. Her chair swiveled as she lifted her feet, placing them on the runners of the rolling office chair.

“That better not have been the sound of mice scampering around in here.”

Contrary to most medical researchers, Sandra had never really been comfortable with mice. Little furry rodents still made her jump, and she shied away from any lab work that required her to deal with the critters.

The room was dimly lit. The only illumination came from the computer screen and desk light behind her and the single light over each table. The whole setup gave her the creeps.

Deciding to brave the walk to the bank of light switches on the far side of the room near the door, Sandra stood. If she had to sit here with a bunch of dead bodies all night, the least she could do was put on every light in the damned room. Why she'd ever thought the desk light would be enough, she didn't know.

She'd gone on shift at midnight and was slated to take readings every hour until 8 a.m. when her day-shift counterpart would relieve her. Scientific work sometimes required a person to work odd hours. Experiments didn't know how to tell time. When the researchers were running something in the lab, she usually got tapped for the late-night hours. Normally she didn't mind. The lab was usually a peaceful, comforting place.

But not now. Not when it had been turned into a morgue. Or maybe it was more like Dr. Frankenstein's dungeon, only without the bug-eyed servant named Igor. She'd definitely seen that old Mel Brooks movie one too many times in college. Thinking about some of the funnier lines from the comedy classic made her smile as she walked down the aisle of tables toward the door and the light switches.

“It's alive…”
As she walked, chuckling to herself, she did a quiet imitation of Gene Wilder from the scene where he'd given life to his monster.

 

On either side of her were slabs on which the cadavers rested. A breeze ruffled one of the sheets that had been pulled over the body on her right.

It must've been a breeze. The sheet couldn't move on its own, right? She quickened her step, a creepy feeling shivering down her spine as the smile left her face.

A hand shot out of the dark and grabbed her wrist. She screamed. The fingers were cold. The flesh was gray. But the grip was strong. Too strong.

It pulled her in. Closer and closer to the body she'd checked only forty-five minutes before. He'd been dead at the time. Immobile. Now he was moving and—oh, God—his eyes were open and he was looking at her. His stare was lifeless as he drew her closer.

She did her best to break free, but the dead man was just too strong. She beat against his fingers with her other hand. When that didn't work, she tried pushing against his cold shoulder. Nothing seemed to help. She hit his face, his chest, anyplace she could reach, but he wouldn't let go.

He drew her closer until she was leaning across him, her arm over his head. Then he opened his mouth…and bit her. She gasped as his teeth broke through her skin. Blood welled as the icy teeth sank deep. Dull eyes looked through her as the dead man chewed on her forearm.

She went crazy, struggling to break free. She must've twisted in the right way because after a moment, she felt herself moving more easily. The next second, she was free.

He sat up, following her progress. She heard noises all around the lab now, echoing off the shadowed walls. She looked around in a panic. Other bodies were rising all around the makeshift morgue.

“How in God's name…?” She gasped, clutching her bleeding arm to her chest as six tall bodies slid off the laboratory tables to stand in the dim, chilled room. She was so scared, she nearly wet her pants. The fear gave her a spike of clarity. She had to get out of there.

She ran for the door. Hands grabbed at her lab coat. She stumbled but caught herself before she could fall to the cold floor. She let her arms slip backward so the oversized lab coat came off, held in those strong hands that had come at her out of the darkness. She had no idea what had gone wrong with the experiment, but she wasn't about to stick around to ask questions. These guys were huge. Big Marines who were easily twice her size. And they didn't seem friendly.

If she could just get to the door. She ran, dodging and weaving around the tables and the reaching arms. They tried to grab the jacket she'd worn under the oversized lab coat, but they had a hard time getting hold of the slippery nylon fabric, thank goodness.

She crashed through the door, running for her life. She had to get help. She had to rouse the entire team. She had to get the MPs, the Marines, and, hell, the National Guard if she could, to stop these guys.

She turned to look over her shoulder just once as she ran into the fringe of trees on the heavily wooded outskirts of the base. What she saw chilled her to the bone. In the dark of the night, she could see the dim, yellow, rectangular glow of the open doorway. Outlined there were the hulking shapes of dead men. The dead Marines were following her path outdoors at a slow, steady, lurching pace.